Bath isn’t really a city that immediately conjure up the atmosphere of the Mississippi Delta.
But for five former students who go by the name of Kill It Kid, the romance of the pre-war Deep South appears to have transported itself across the Atlantic to a smallish city in South West England.
Named after an old Blind Willie McTell song, Kill It Kid channel the spirit and ethics of the Delta Blues of the 1930s whilst infusing it with some good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n’ roll and a smattering of pop and jazz.
The quintet met at Bath Spa University, where four-fifths of the band were studying music. Having been on the Bath music scene as a solo performer with a penchant for slide guitar, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Chris Turpin formed Kill It Kid as an acoustic duo with bassist Adam Timmins.
The group as it is today eventually fell into place through various musical collaborations for their university music course. “Basically one day we turned around and said, ‘Shall we have a go at being a band?’ and got everyone together in the same room, and it sounded dreadful,” remembers Chris.
Initial dreadfulness aside, Kill It Kid have so far trodden a blessed path. Having only been together for just over a year, everything has happened at a dizzying speed for the band. Signed to One Little Indian within three months of forming, they went on tour across the UK last summer and then headed over to Seattle to record their debut album.
“It is terrifying that it came together so quickly,” explains Chris. “It’s absolutely fantastic, but it’s just a bit strange, because me and Marc [Jones,drums] come from backgrounds where you work really hard in a band. It was such a quick turnaround, so it still hasn’t quite sunk in.”
Generous helpings of slide guitar, violins and piano are overlaid with Chris and Steph Ward’s respective vocals, which add soul and grit to proceedings in turn. Chris sounds like a younger, slightly more whiskeydrenched Antony Hegarty, whose haunting voice demands attention from the off, while Steph’s honeyed dulcet tones add a much-needed feminine soul to the group.
For a group aged twenty to twentyone, the strength and depth of their songs belie their age. “Listening to what’s in the charts and what people are buying, I personally didn’t quite understand the music that’s being written at the moment about going out and getting trashed, that seems very alien to what I think music’s about,” says Chris rather seriously. “There’s a quote I heard Bob Dylan say about Woody Guthrie, that all the airwaves are sacred, so what you sing, you have to truly believe in it and it has to be up to par, and I guess we wanted to seriously get back to this 1930s’ music ethic.”
If the airwaves are sacred, Kill It Kid do a very good job of treating them reverentially. Come pay your respects.
